Dr. Tian Lou is a Research Scientist at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs and the Center for Human Resource Research (CHRR) at The Ohio State University. Dr. Lou received her Ph.D. degree in Economics from University of Connecticut in 2017. Her primary research field is labor economics. Her studies focus on earnings and employment outcomes of disadvantaged youths, immigrants, apprentices, Unemployment Insurance (UI) claimants, and recipients of Ohio welfare and job training programs.

In her work at OSU, Dr. Lou conducts program evaluations and quantitative analyses by using Ohio administrative data. In the evaluation of Comprehensive Case Management and Employment Program (CCMEP) and Wage Pathways (programs that help 14-24 year old youths to look for jobs and obtain higher levels of education), she combined CCMEP program data with UI wage records to track participants’ pre- and post-program earnings and employment. In the evaluation of registered apprenticeship programs, she utilized econometric models and Ohio administrative data to explore post-program earnings differences between apprentices and people with similar pre-program educational attainment but no or limited job training. She received funding from 2018-19 Department of Labor (DOL) Scholar Program for this research.

Dr. Lou has extensive experience with Ohio UI claims data. She led the analysis and the development of Ohio UI Claims Dashboard in 2020. The dashboard tracks the number of Ohio workers who filed UI claims in different demographic groups, industries, occupations, and geography levels over time. She was one of the instructors of the DOL Employment and Training Administration (ETA) Applied Data Analytics program in 2021. The program trained state workforce agencies to use administrative data to examine UI claimants’ unemployment to reemployment trajectories. On June 2022, Dr. Lou presented her UI claims research at the C2ER/LMI Institute Annual Conference and Forum. She tracked three groups of UI claimants who lost their jobs before, during, and after the pandemic recession. She discussed how the three groups differ in terms of the duration of collecting UI benefits and labor market status over time.